END ZONE

End Zone by Don DeLillo was the novel assigned to me for the Final Synthesis Studio, developed as part of my bachelor’s thesis in Communication Design at Politecnico di Milano. The task was to design a new edition of the novel as a “visual book,” where typography, layout, materials, and binding would amplify the meaning of the text.

I emphasized the division of the novel into three parts by using two different kinds of paper: an industrial white stock for the first and third sections, reflecting the monotony expressed in those chapters, and a natural green Japanese paper for the central section, which conveys the energy of the football match. In this middle part, the text column narrows to encourage faster reading, echoing the speed of the game’s descriptions.

The book’s format was based on the most common novel sizes in Italy, and paired with Simoncini Garamond and a traditional grid system, so that at first glance it appears like any other book — just as the protagonist’s story seems ordinary while concealing an underlying psychological struggle.

To express this hidden danger, I designed a cover with fluorescent yellow paper emerging from beneath a thin dust jacket portraying football players as national heroes, another theme of the novel. Finally, the Swiss binding exposes the heterogeneous paper structure along the spine: a rupture that symbolizes looking directly into the protagonist’s fractured inner life.